Blowpaste is the world's first vegan oral sex lubricant that doubles as toothpaste

Read the whole thing at UPI:

The Chicago couple created their company, CheekyChaCha, and made the water-based Blowpaste lube from aloe vera, sodium bicarbonate, vegetable glycerin, and peppermint and wintergreen essential oils.

Bearing the slogan "Dirty sex, clean mouth," Blowpaste was created, Ejan says, because most oral lubricants contain aspartame, candy flavors and other things that are bad for your teeth.

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Check out this test for eighth graders in Kentucky dated 1912

In case you didn't realize how much the government schools have been dumbed down:

Update: Answers here, via Greg Pollowitz.

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Paralyzed Man Wakes to Find His Dog Bit Off His Testicle

Gawker:

An Arkansas man paralyzed from the waist down told police he awoke Monday morning to a "burning pain," only to find his dog chewing on a ball. His ball, that is.

According to the official police report, the 39-year-old Trumann resident regularly sleeps in the raw, and was fully nude when he woke up yesterday around 7:45 AM to discover his dog "had eaten one of his testicles."

The unidentified owner had rescued the "small, white, fluffy" stray just three weeks ago, and had yet to take it in for a checkup.

Sadly, the dog's first visit to a vet was to be euthanized.

The Arkansas Department of Health will test the dog's remains for rabies.

Meanwhile, adding insult to injury, the man was transported to St. Bernards Regional Medical Center to be treated.

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Enterprise Rent-A-Car has a new ad campaign

Low Rates And ‘Cock Sucking’ Promised In Rental Car Ad.

The ad in question appeared in the July 19 edition of Wales Pembrokeshire Herald. It claims Enterprise has every day low rates, holiday discounts, an extensive range of vehicles to choose from, home pick-up and delivery, and "cock sucking."

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The New Bailout Begins: Eminent Domain Is Upon Us

Read the whole post at Zero Hedge: 

Richmond, CA is raising both market and constitutional concerns. As NYTimes reports, the city is the first to use eminent domain by the local government (in partnership with a 'friendly' mortgage provider) to seize homes, force investors to take a loss on the mortgages, re-issue a new 'lower' mortgage, and allow the homeowner back with positive equity (ready to lever-it-back-up into a new Harley). As Guggenheim notes, this is likely to hurt supply of new mortgages and as we noted previously (here and here), it seems clear that private-label MBS holders will not be happy, consumers hurt as mortgage costs would rise (this 'risk' has to be priced in), and taxpayers unhappy as this is yet another transfer payment scheme to bailout underwater loans.

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Not The Onion: New teeth grown from urine

Read the whole thing at BBC:

Scientists have grown rudimentary teeth out of the most unlikely of sources, human urine.

The results, published in Cell Regeneration Journal, showed that urine could be used as a source of stem cells that in turn could be grown into tiny tooth-like structures.

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Scientists find mystery coffin at Richard III site

A team of archaeologists said Monday it has unearthed an unusual coffin-within-a-coffin in the central England parking lot where it found the skeleton of King Richard III, and that they hope to identify the remains within.

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These 7 Incredibly Bizarre Classic ‘Smurfs’ Episodes Are Really Smurfy

Interesting post at Flavorwire: As Smurfs 2 opens this week, and everyone under 12 will see it and not a single person over 20 will go without a kid in tow, it’s time to look back at the real Smurfs, i.e. those of the Hanna Barbera cartoon that ran from 1981-1990. 

The Smurfs first reached American shores in the 1980s, and in some lights the country has never been the same.

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Tuesday links

Can You Actually Cough Up A Lung?

Sharknado hairdo, or hat, or something.

How Beer Gets Its Color.

If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of?

9 Terrifying Parasites.

The Cost of Being a Superhero in Real Life: Then & Now (Infographics).

Cross-posted at @NRO's The Corner.

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Ruby Slippers for the Sharknado/Wizard of Oz Crossover

How cool are these?

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The Price of Being a Superhero in Real Life: Then & Now

You can view all 5 superheroes at Mashable (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk and Wolverine).

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Porn Sex vs Real Sex, The Differences Explained With Food

Probably NSFW just because of the subject, but it's actually pretty PG-13.



via Laughing Squid.

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Couple born on same day, married for 75 years, died one day apart

Both born on the same day, Dec. 31, 1918, Helen and Les were high school sweethearts who celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary this year. It would be their last - Helen died on Tuesday, July 16, and Les died the next day, July 17. They were 94.

They met at Huntington Park High School and eloped on Sept. 19, 1937. They were married against their own parents’ wishes. “It was a real love match, wasn’t it,” their oldest son, Les Jr., said. “They were together every day for 75 years.”

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Hospital Networks Reject ObamaCare Accountable Care Organization (ACO) initiative

Investors: Nine major hospital networks just decided they'd had enough of being "Pioneers" for ObamaCare.

They withdrew from the health reform law's Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) initiative, which launched in January 2012 with 32 health systems participating.

Health systems have cooled to the ACO concept in part because the federal government is six months behind in providing them the Medicare claims data they need to comply with the rules.

Providers are also concerned about the risks they have to assume to participate. If they don't realize the "savings" that regulators demand, they'll have to just take the loss — regardless of how much time, effort, or expense it takes to treat someone.

The intent is to force ACOs to be more efficient. But this setup gives providers substantial incentives to skimp on medical care.  

Plus, patients could potentially sue entire ACOs for medical malpractice by claiming that their "actions or policies prioritized cost savings over patient safety."

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China clamps down on cheating in university entrance exams by banning brassieres

A letter sent to candidates’ parents outlined the new policy: “When students and staff enter the exam venue they will have their clothes, accessories, shoes, hats and any carry-ins strictly checked by professionals and will only be allowed to enter if the equipment does not set off an alarm. Therefore, any article that contains metal and can trigger beeping from the security machines will become obstacles for the candidates.”

Bras with metal clips were banned while students with metal fillings or implants would have to produce a doctor’s note, Xinhua reported.

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Detroit is dying, but neighboring Oakland County is booming

Via AEI, an interesting story from Bloomberg about the stark contrast between dying, bankrupt Detroit and its thriving, prosperous, wealthy neighbor directly across 8 Mile Road — Oakland County, one of a small, select group of US counties that is so financially stable that it enjoy a Triple-A bond rating.

Since 1950 the population of Detroit has fallen by more than 60 percent, from 1.8 million to 700,000. Over that same period the population of Oakland County—a square comprising Ferndale, Southfield, Birmingham, and a cluster of other cities and towns—tripled, to 1.2 million. The county today is one of the wealthiest in the country, and 8 Mile Road has the feel of an international border. The relationship between Detroit, the nation’s poorest city, and its northern neighbors often resembles a border dispute, characterized on both sides by anger, resentment, fear, and caricature. Detroit’s July 18 bankruptcy filing is merely the latest chapter in the long dysfunctional marriage between a once-thriving city and its suburbs. 

If there’s one person who best embodies this psychodrama, it’s L. Brooks Patterson, the county executive of Oakland and for decades one of Detroit’s harshest critics. Patterson, 74, who was elected to his sixth term last fall, has held the post since 1993. 

Patterson oversees 4,000 employees and a budget of $776 million for fiscal 2013. In the 1990s he switched county workers from defined benefit pensions to 401(k)-type plans, and new hires no longer get lifetime retiree health care—instead they receive health savings accounts. Changes like these have saved hundreds of millions of dollars and eliminated the legacy labor costs that plague not only Detroit but city and state governments all over the country. Oakland is part of a select group of U.S. counties that enjoy a Triple-A bond rating.

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Today is Mussolini's birthday

The Germans should allow themselves to be guided by me if they wish to avoid unpardonable blunders. In politics it is undeniable that I am more intelligent than Hitler.
- Benito Mussolini (attributed, 1934)

It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great, it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. This is what I shall do.
- Mussolini (quoted in the diary of his son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, 11 April 1940, the day after Mussolini brought Italy into World War II)

Voglia partire in perfetto orario... D'ora innanzi ogni cosa deve camminare alta perfezione.
- Mussolini (to a railway station-master, attributed)

(We must leave exactly on time... From now on, everything must function to perfection.*)

(Today is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Forli province. Mussolini studied in Lausanne and Geneva but was expelled from Switzerland because of his socialist activities. As a journalist in Italy, he continued his political agitation and argued for Italy's entry into World War I, in which he was later wounded. He founded his fascist party in Milan in 1919 and by 1922 was invited to form a government during a political crisis partly of his own making. During the 1920s, Mussolini soon embarked on a wide-ranging reform program while gradually eliminating opposition parties and becoming more aggressive in foreign policy. His alliance with Germany in 1939 led directly to Italy's disastrous role in World War II, for which he was deposed in 1943 and later executed by Italian partisans. Of Mussolini, English writer J. B. Priestly said in 1934,

"The man's a fraud, a mountebank, a megaphone. He doesn't amount to anything more than a black-shirted bullfrog croaking away in the mud.")

* N.B. Likely the origin of the view that "Mussolini made the trains run ontime," which indeed he did.

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Weiner happy about his shrinking staff

At Michelle Malkin: Anthony Weiner’s campaign manager quit on Saturday, but according to Weiner that’s good, because it’ll make room for all the people who are clamoring to work for him:

Anthony Weiner’s already limp mayoral campaign suffered another huge blow yesterday, when his campaign manager abandoned the sinking ship.

Danny Kedem quit as Weiner’s campaign point man following a disastrous week on the trail, the embattled mayoral candidate confirmed this morning.

“Danny has left the campaign. He did a remarkable job,” Weiner said

“We have an excellent staff. More people have come on, frankly. We’ve gotten more volunteers and more people coming over to help the campaign in the last several days than anytime since the campaign started.”

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The Science Behind the Foul-Smelling Corpse Flower

What’s eight feet tall, has a creepy nickname and can be smelled from miles away? It’s the rare titan arum plant, aka the corpse flower or Amorphophallus titanum, which just bloomed in the United States Botanic Gardens in Washington, DC. The plant has an unpredictable blooming cycle that lasts years, and the corpse-like odor it emits attracts pollinating bugs like flies and dung beetles. In the video below, the Botanic Garden’s public science educator Todd Brethauer explains the chemistry behind this legendary plant’s potent stink.

via Geeks Are Sexy.

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A life-sized Cylon made out of wood

Dmitry Balandin, a scifi enthusiast and crane operator from Ukraine, has built a life-sized robot fashioned from 500 pieces of plywood.

More information and several more pictures at io9.

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Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks tonight

Details at EarthSky.

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Is Your Cable Box Spying On You?

The abyss is staring back: Behavior-Detecting Devices From Verizon, Microsoft And Others Worry Privacy Advocates.

Should a TV-mounted box have the ability to track our movements, record our voices and monitor our behaviors? Should cable providers and tech companies be allowed to collect such information without our consent?

Lawmakers and privacy advocates are asking such questions as companies continue to experiment with data collection that will extend beyond our gadgets and into our living rooms and bedrooms.

Reminds me of Dr. Seuss: 

“Oh, the jobs people work at! Out west near Hawtch-Hawtch there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher, his job is to watch. Is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee, a bee that is watched will work harder you see. So he watched and he watched, but in spite of his watch that bee didn't work any harder not mawtch. So then somebody said "Our old bee-watching man just isn't bee watching as hard as he can, he ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher! The thing that we need is a bee-watcher-watcher!". Well, the bee-watcher-watcher watched the bee-watcher. He didn't watch well so another Hawtch-Hawtcher had to come in as a watch-watcher-watcher! And now all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch are watching on watch watcher watchering watch, watch watching the watcher who's watching that bee. You're not a Hawtch-Watcher you're lucky you see!”

via Instapundit.

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Sharknado hairdo, or hat, or something.

via Fashionably Geek.

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Turnabout: Korean news station uses goofy names for Southwest pilots involved in landing gear collapse

Slothed: You probably remember KTVU’s royal eff up with reading obviously fake Asian names for the pilots of the Asiana crash. Names like “Wi To Lo” and “Ho Lee Fuk”.

It looks like a Korean news agency is having some fun at KTVU’s expense. After the landing gear failure of the Southwest flight at LGA they showed this graphic with American pilot names “Captain Kent Parker Wright”, “Co-Captain Wyatt Wooden Workman”.

They even went as far as making up fake names for people to interview. Flight instructor “Heywood U. Flye-Moore” and skeptical passenger “Macy Lawyers”.

Well played Korean TV, well played.

via Fark.

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New Pakistani superhero: the Burka Avenger

Meet Burka Avenger: a mild-mannered teacher with secret martial arts skills who uses a flowing black burka to hide her identity as she fights local thugs seeking to shut down the girls' school where she works.

In a case of art mirroring life, the cartoon is one that Pakistanis can only too keenly relate to - as their educational institutions are regularly targeted by terrorists.

The Taliban have blown up hundreds of schools and attacked activists in Pakistan's northwest because they oppose girls' education.

The militants sparked worldwide condemnation last fall when they shot Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old schoolgirl activist, in the head in an unsuccessful attempt to kill her.

Action in the 'Burka Avenger' cartoon series, which is scheduled to start running on Geo TV in early August, isthe first South Asian ninja who wields books and pens as weapons.

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UK woman who received $10K taxpayer funded boob job suing for $20K because her boobs are too big

The Taxpayers’ Alliance hit out: “She appears to want to milk the NHS and taxpayers."

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True Facts About The Owl

Ze Frank's latest:

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The science of winning poker

Interesting article at WSJ:

Concepts from the branch of mathematics known as game theory have inspired new ideas in poker strategy and new advice for ordinary players. Poker is still a game of reading people, but grasping the significance of their tics and twitches isn't nearly as important as being able to profile their playing styles and understand what their bets mean.

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Despite bankruptcy, Detroit’s new $400 million dollar taxpayer-funded hockey rink is a “go”

Read the whole thing at HotAir.

Failure sometimes has an inertia that is difficult to stop. Detroit’s reality is anything but pretty:

Detroit city services are already stretched extremely thin. On average, police take about an hour to respond to calls for help, and 40% of street lights are shut off to save money.

Because of a lack of funds, the police force has shrunk in size to the point that it simply can’t respond in any meaningful way to help citizens who are victims of crime. As you might imagine then, crime is horrific. City services are so minimal as to almost be non-existent. Yet the refusal to face that reality and deal with it still exists among those who should know better.

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1920's - What The Future Will Look Like

via Everlasting Blort

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142 larvae were manually extracted, aided by the application of raw bacon which served as an attractant

Read the whole thing at Discover.

“During her hospital stay, a total of 142 larvae were manually extracted, aided by the application of raw bacon which served as an attractant and petroleum jelly occlusion.”

You might be surprised to know that finding interesting articles on infections and infestations is a thankless and occasionally banal job. It is rare, as you find yourself trawling through the dusty and dense annals of Pubmed and Jstor, that you stumble upon a really good paper, the true gold twinkling among the pyrite of multisyllabic articles on viral proteomics, immunology and dull epidemiological trends in diseases. When you discover a treasure that renders you mute, like the one I recently discovered on a screwworm infestation that was wrangled by physicians with processed pork products, it’s like chancing upon a chupacabra in your backyard. The sight is both rare and awful, but also mesmerizing to behold. 

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Former IMF chief Strauss'Kahn charged with pimping

LA Times: Strauss-Kahn, 64, a former Paris finance minister, has admitted through his lawyers attending “libertine” parties at hotels in France and in Washington, where the International Monetary Fund is based, in 2010 and 2011.

However, he has always insisted he did not know that some of the women present were prostitutes and denies the pimping charge.

After the investigation into what has been dubbed the Carlton Affair was launched in October 2011, Strauss-Kahn's lawyer, Henri Leclerc, told French television it was reasonable to assume his client did not know that a number of women at the parties were being paid for sex.

“As you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you're not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” Leclerc said.

Strauss-Kahn, a former presidential hopeful, has been pursued by claims of sexual offenses since his arrest by New York police in May 2011, following accusations that he tried to rape hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.

The criminal charges were eventually dropped after doubts emerged about the maid's credibility. But Strauss-Kahn, who insisted Diallo had consented to oral sex, was forced to pay her substantial damages, reportedly in the region of $6 million.

The French state prosecutor had recommended dropping the Carlton Affair charges against Strauss-Kahn on grounds of a lack of evidence. The French magistrates overseeing the investigation rejected the recommendation and maintained a charge of “aggravated pimping as part of a group.” In France, the offense of “pimping” covers a wide range of crimes includes aiding or encouraging prostitution.

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Man Attempts To Rob Gun Store With Bat

HILLSBORO, Ore. (AP) — The Washington County sheriff’s office says a man who attempted to rob a Beaverton gun store with a baseball bat and a knife was thwarted when the manager drew his own gun.

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Friday links

The Evolution of Wolverine: From 1974 to 2013.  And here's a Supercut of Wolverine’s Claws Coming Out.

Slate has a Carlos Danger Name Generator.

10 Weirdest Mythological Creatures In the World.

AK-47 being shot underwater, in slow motion, with bonus science lesson.

Gallery of Sinkholes.

No, but seriously. If sharknadoes were real, where would they strike?

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Supercut Compilation of Wolverine’s Claws Coming Out

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AK-47 being shot underwater, in slow motion, with bonus science lesson

via GMSV.

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Students Sign Petition to Legalize 4th Trimester Abortion

via MRC.

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Vibrating bicycle seat cover provides exciting new incentive to cycle to work

Daily Mail: We are always being told to incorporate more exercise into our daily routines - and cycling to work is an excellent way of doing so.

And if you were reluctant to hit the pedals before, a new gizmo could provide all the incentive you need to get on your bike.

A firm has launched the Happy Ride - a vibrating seat cover that will make journeys by bicycle that bit more exciting.

The inconspicuous gadget slips over the seat of a bike and incorporates 'vibration stimulation’ as you ride.

The vibration can be turned on and off using the control pad which then tucks into a pocket in the seat cover allowing you to peddle away uninhibited.

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Why Constitutional Protections Won’t Mean Diddly for Detroit’s Labor Unions in Bankruptcy

A federal judge yesterday threw out multiple union lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Detroit’s bankruptcy filing and declared his courtroom the exclusive venue for future proceedings. This is a setback for the unions’ legal argument that the filing violates the state constitution in not holding their pension benefits harmless. It is also a strategic setback because they no longer have the option for shopping around for friendly judges who they have helped elect to state courts.

Via Reason, which links to a longer article in Bloomberg.

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19 year old "undocumented immigrant" rapes and beats to death 93 year old woman

OMAHA, Neb. —A 19-year-old accused of beating and raping an elderly woman who later died will now face a murder charge.

Prosecutors said Sergio Martinez-Perez beat and sexually assaulted 93-year-old Louise Sollowin in her home Sunday. Sollowin died Wednesday.

-- Video: Family reacts to assault

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine on Thursday said Martinez-Perez will be charged with first-degree murder.

Autopsy results showed that Sollowin's cause of death was blunt force trauma.

Martinez-Perez, who already faces charges of first-degree sexual assault, first-degree assault and burglary, is set to appear before a judge Friday to be arraigned on the new charge.

Investigators said Martinez-Perez is not a legal resident of the United States, and that his country of origin is not yet clear.

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Warning to tourists in France after attack by feral cats

I assume the feral cats are either German or "youths".

About six cats pounced on the unnamed dog owner as she walked her poodle in the city of Belfort, in the popular Franche-Comte region, on the Swiss border, dragging her to the ground and mauling her.

She was bitten repeatedly and left with a torn artery which could have proved fatal, while the dog was also badly hurt.

The dog was, of course, a poodle.

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George H.W. Bush shaves head in solidarity for young cancer patient

KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE — President George H. W. Bush this week joined members of his Secret Service detail in shaving his head to show his support for the two year-old son of a detail member who is being treated for leukemia and started losing his hair.

The 89 year-old commander-in-chief took the unusual step earlier this week after learning, and seeing, that many members of his security detail had already gone under the razor to show their support for young Patrick.

BPD members have also launched a website atwww.patrickspals.org to assist with Patrick’s medical bills.

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Wired: How Protecting Your Privacy Could Make You the Bad Guy

Read the whole thing.

There’s a funny catch-22 when it comes to privacy best practices. The very techniques that experts recommend to protect your privacy from government and commercial tracking could be at odds with the antiquated, vague Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

A number of researchers (including me) recently joined an amicus brief (filed by Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society in the “Weev” case), arguing how security and privacy researchers are put at risk by this law.

However, I’d also like to make the case here that the CFAA is bad privacy policy for consumers, too. It’s not just something that affects hackers and academics.

The crux of a CFAA violation hinges on whether or not an action allows a user to gain “access without authorization” or “exceed authorized access” to a computer. The scary part, therefore, is when these actions involve everyday behaviors like clearing cookies, changing browser reporting, using VPNs, and even protecting one’s mobile phone from being identified.

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At Least 56 Die in Train Derailment in Northwestern Spain

The accident appeared to be caused by excessive speed.

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HD Footage Of Plants And Insects Magnified Thousands Of Times

via Presurfer.

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Japan Finally Admits Fukushima Radiation Leaking into the Pacific

After two years of publicly denying the obvious, the General Manager of TEPCO, the company which owns and operates the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, has admitted radiation has contaminated surrounding groundwater and is now leaking into the Pacific Ocean.

The announcement, by TEPCO GM Masayuki Ono, came in a press conference on Monday after reporters pushed for more open disclosure. Independent monitors in the area have recorded elevated levels of radioactive caesium, which have "increased by more than 100 times in just a few days."

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Stock Market Behavior Predicted by Rat Neurons

Neatorama posts a 2005 article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

We here report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, rat motor cortex neurons predicting the behavior of the American stock market. We implanted the motor cortex of the brains of rats with silicon electrodes. Using the correlation technique, we monitored the activity of neurons in our rats while simultaneously tracking the activity of stocks in the U.S. stock market.

Results

We found that 74 stocks were responsive to the firing rates of our rats. Figure 2 shows an example of one stock (COKE, Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated) that was positively correlated with the rat neurons. 

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America's best educated kids don't go to school

Read the whole thing:

With public school students at the 50th percentile, home schoolers were at the 89th percentile in reading, the 86th percentile in science, the 84th percentile in language, math, and social studies.

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MythBusters special takes on Breaking Bad myths

Per Entertainment Weekly, an upcoming episode of MythBusters (“MethBusters“) will test myths featured in the series Breaking Bad (including “whether you can really dissolve a body — and your tub and bathroom floor — with hydrofluoric acid”).

Here's the trailer.

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Detroit Goes Up for Sale on eBay – Opening Bid $7.50

This is your chance to own a piece of America!

Known for producing some of America's finest automobiles like the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto, Detroit was once home to a bustling industrial and manufacturing economy. 

All it needs now is a little TLC (and approximately 3 trillion dollars). In addition to owning a little slice of Michigan, your purchase of Detroit gets you:

• An honorary Detroit Pistons championship ring from 2004
• That cool Chrysler commercial with Eminem
• A statue of Robocop that might get built 
• The 1,297th ranked educational system in America 
• Justin Verlander
• Unlimited use of the phrase, "Detroit Muscle" 
• The complete catalog of Motown Records albums including Diane Ross, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. You know, 'baby makin' music

BUT WAIT....

There's more!

Buy within five days of this listing and get Flint, Michigan for FREE! A bonus worth more than $75!

Bid with confidence, folks. This one won't last long. 

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Margarita. anyone? Here's a 380 horsepower blender powered by an old muscle car engine.

The invention, which runs on gasoline and requires a key to start, can blend about five gallons in one minute. Keene says his blender has been put to good use during summer parties, but says it's really just a regular appliance.

"You can make it alcoholic, non-alcoholic. You can use tequila, rum," says Keene. "Anything that you can make in a blender. We're still experimenting."

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First trailer for The Hunger Game: Catching Fire just released

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Helen Thomas dead at 92

Hard to say anything other than good riddance.  Althouse has a link to an article on her death plus links to previous posts.

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Belly Dancing Female Wookiee Backed by a Klingon Band

When universes collide.



via Geeks are sexy.

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Grandma Drummer

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Feynman's ode to wine

I ran across this today (I'd seen it long ago but forgotten about it).  See a larger version here.  via It's OK To Be Smart.

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Mark Steyn on Detroit: six decades of “progressive” policies

No bombs, no invasions, no civil war, just “liberal” “progressive” politics day in, day out. Americans sigh and say, “Oh, well, Detroit’s an ‘outlier.’” It’s an outlier only in the sense that it happened here first. The same malign alliance between a corrupt political class, rapacious public-sector unions, and an ever more swollen army of welfare dependents has been adopted in the formally Golden State of California, and in large part by the Obama administration, whose priorities — “health” “care” “reform,” “immigration” “reform” — are determined by the same elite/union/dependency axis. As one droll tweeter put it, “If Obama had a city, it would look like Detroit.”

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina declared Detroit’s bankruptcy “unconstitutional” because, according to the Detroit Free Press, “the Michigan Constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees.” Which means that, in Michigan, reality is unconstitutional.

The one good thing that could come out of bankruptcy is if those public-sector pensions are cut and government workers forced to learn what happens when, as National Review’s Kevin Williamson puts it, a parasite outgrows its host. But, pending an appeal, that’s “unconstitutional,” no matter how dead the host is. Beyond that, Detroit needs urgently both to make it non-insane for talented people to live in the city, and to cease subjecting its present population to a public “education” system that’s little more than unionized child abuse.

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Must read Jonah Goldberg on the execrable Sharpton

Read the whole thing at NRO:

Sharpton’s relationship with money has always been complicated. When he claimed he didn’t have the resources to pay damages in a defamation suit he lost, Sharpton was asked in a deposition how he could afford his suits. He didn’t own them, he replied, someone else did. He was merely granted “access” to the garments as needed. The same went for his TV, silverware, etc.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. In our overly therapeutic culture, we talk a lot about “enabling” pathologies, self-destructive behavior, etc. Well, Sharpton is a pathology enabled by the very system he loathes.

In a healthy society, Sharpton might be on parole now — not the must-get guest for Meet the Press and Today on issues of racial justice.

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Friday links

Happy Meals for Horror Films.

Real life imitates Syfy channel - Video: 154 pound giant piranha.

Incredible plant sculptures.

The story behind football's yellow first down line.

How Cereal Transformed American Culture.

Excellent Wolverine Puppet Musical.

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Real life imitates syfy channel - Video: 154 pound giant piranha

This real-life giant piranha is nearly five feet long and weighs 154 pounds. It is the largest member of the tigerfish clan, a genus of fierce predators with protruding, dagger-like teeth. It is found in Congo River system and Lake Tanganyika.

It is the only fish that doesn't fear crocodile, locals say, and it actually eats smaller ones. Sometimes it also attack humans. It's so lightning fast and forceful, not only will it snap an angler's line but it will sometimes make off with his or her tackle.

More information and pictures at Digital Journal.

The Syfy channel has Piranhaconda - here's the trailer:

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Eddie Murphy Rule: was the commodities trading in Trading Places realistic?

NPR's Planet Money Podcast:

We know something crazy happens on the trading floor. We know that Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd get rich and the Duke brothers lose everything. But how does it all happen? And could it happen in the real world?

Also on the show: The "Eddie Murphy Rule" that wound up in the the big financial overhaul law Congress passed in 2010.

via GeekPress.

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Man Who Couldn’t Defeat George W. Bush Attempting To Resolve Israel-Palestine Conflict

AMMAN, JORDAN (The Onion)—Arriving in the Middle East today for top-level negotiations with Palestinian and Israeli officials, a man who could not even devise a way to beat George W. Bush in a head-to-head vote will spend the next several days attempting to bring a peaceful resolution to the most intractable global conflict of the modern era, State Department sources confirmed. “We are confident that [this person who managed to win just 19 states against George W. Bush, even in the midst of two highly unpopular and costly foreign wars] will be able to establish a framework to bring about lasting peace in the Middle East,” said State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, stating that the diplomat, who was actually deemed by the American populace to be a worse option than four more years of an administration led by a former baseball team owner and Dick Cheney, could provide the leadership necessary to resolve the bitter, bloody conflict that has raged for more than six decades. “[The individual whose sole goal for more than a year was to make the simple case that he would do a better job than one of the most disliked and poorly rated politicians of all time, and who decisively failed at this singular task] will lay out his bold vision for a road map to peace, and it’s one that we believe both Israelis and Palestinians will be very receptive to. Our best hope for a safe, prosperous Middle East lies with [a guy who came in second to a former substance abuser who nearly choked to death on a pretzel].” Sources throughout Israel and the Palestinian territories said they were optimistic about a peace deal, saying they were eager to hear the ideas of the husband of a powerful food-processing heiress.

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Before Breaking Bad's last 8 episodes, here's a 9 minute round-up of the whole show so far

The last 8 episodes start August 11!

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96-Year-Old Woman Refuses Would-Be Robber

MARSHFIELD (Wisconsin) - Read the whole thing.

A 96-year-old Marshfield woman with nerves of steel prevented her mom-and-pop grocery store from being robbed.

Police say the would-be robber may have thought the woman was an easy target when he entered Wolf's Grocery Store in Marshfield.

But the woman put up a fight the man never expected.

Police say the man wearing a mask ordered Wolf to open the cash register.

"I said I'm not opening up that cash register and that's it, I'm not opening it, I said you can have all the Tootsie Rolls you want but I am not opening that cash register," said Wolf.

Wolf has run the store for more than 50 years. She says she stood her ground Monday for a simple reason—the money was hers.

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IRS Admits It Leaked Christine O’Donnell’s Tax Records To Opposition Day She Announced

Washington Times: 

On March 9, 2010, the day she revealed her plan to run for the Senate in a press release, a tax lien was placed on a house purported to be hers and publicized. The problem was she no longer owned the house. The IRS eventually blamed the lien on a computer glitch and withdrew it.

Now Mr. Martel, a criminal investigator for the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, was telling her that an official in Delaware state government had improperly accessed her records on that very same day.

Beyond that, Ms. O’Donnell and Senate investigators who have tried to help her have run into a wall of silence, leaving more questions than answers about whether abuses of the IRS system extend to private individuals and not just the tax-exempt groups already identified as victims.

via Instapundit.

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Does NSA know your WiFi password? Andriod backups may give it to them

Read the whole thing at Ars: If you’re using Google’s “back up my data” feature for Android, the passwords to the Wi-Fi networks you access from your smartphone or tablet are available in plaintext to anyone with access to the data. And, as a bug report submitted by an employee of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on July 12 suggests, that leaves them wide open to harvesting by agencies like the NSA or the FBI.

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Résumés of Unemployed Disney Villains

"At the end of their movies, these Disney villains find themselves out of a job. Their evil plans have been thwarted, their life’s work (however villainous) has been snuffed out. So what do they do after their adversaries (otherwise known as some of our favorite characters) get to live happily ever after? We think they might have to look for new places to use their very special sets of skills. And to get a new job, you need a great resume. Here’s what we imagine some Disney villain resumes might look like."

Via Laughing Squid.

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Must see: Wolverine Puppet Musical

This is excellent, especially if you love musicals - songs sung to the tune of Fugue for Tinhorns (Guys and Dolls), Oh, What a Beautiful Morning (Oklahoma), and Music of the Night (Phantom), among others.



Previously: Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory, a.k.a. “The Hero’s Journey” explained by puppets.

via The Mary Sue.

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Tuesday links

How would earth change if you drained the oceans? If you dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?

Real-Life Superhuman Blows Up Hot Water Bottles with His Nose. With video.

Doc Holliday's dental chair available at auction.

Excellent gallery of airships.

Reporter Awkwardly Shows What To Do In a Bear Encounter.

Why mosquitoes bite some people more than others.

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Reporter Awkwardly Shows What To Do In a Bear Encounter

After a man came face-to-face with a 300 lb. black bear in Scituate, Rhode Island, NBC affiliate reporter Julie Trammel created a safety segment where she melodramatically acted out just what viewers should do if they are ever confronted with a “curious bear.” Several commenters on YouTube have warned that these instructions should never be heeded in the event of a bear encounter.

via LaughingSquid.

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Real-Life Superhuman Blows Up Hot Water Bottles with His Nose. With video.

Talk about useless superpowers...

Jemal Tkeshelashvili, from Georgia, is a superhuman with a very unique ability. He can blow up hot water bottles to the point where they explode, with his nose. Jemal currently holds the Guinness World Record for most hot water bottles burst with the nose in one minute.

What Jemal does might seem silly, but it’s actually quite extraordinary considering most people can barely blow up a latex balloon, let alone a thick rubber hot water bottle, with their nose. One might think it’s his lungs that do all the work, but tests have shown that his lungs are not much different than those of an average healthy person. He has good pulmonary volume, but it’s the force with which he’s capable of pushing out the air that makes him special. That means his strong intercostal and abdominal muscles push out all the air in his lungs really fast, creating enormous pressure. In 2009, the 23-year-old judo practitioner set a new record for most hot water bottles burst with the nose in one minute, managing to explode three of them, but he’s capable of much more impressive feats.

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Tiny Diapers for the Tip of Your Penis

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Quotation of the day

“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”

~Thomas Sowell

via Carpe Diem.

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10 Twinkie Facts for the Great Return

Twinkies are back in stores today.

1. Twinkies were invented because a bakery manager named James Dewar wanted to get more use out of his shortcake pans. He noticed that he was only pulling those particular pans out of his cupboard during the summer strawberry season and wondered if he was really getting enough bang for his buck out of them. The Continental Baking Company where he was employed was looking for a new, cheap snack to satisfy Depression-Era buyers without emptying their pockets, so Dewar combined the neglected shortcake pans with a recipe that was cheap to make and came up with the Twinkie.

2. Back in those days, Twinkies were sold two for five cents...

3. ...which was a good price if Dewar wanted to buy his own creation in a store, because he never saw a penny of royalties from inventing the Twinkie or naming them. They were named after he spotted a billboard advertising "Twinkle Toe Shoes."

Read the whole list at Mental Floss.  I like this one:

9. Do you remember Twinkie the Kid? The official mascot could wrangle you up a Twinkie in the blink of an eye. He had some lesser-known Hostess cohorts including Captain Cupcake, Happy Ho Ho, and Fruit Pie the Magician.

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Happy Bastille Day. Here's an old Jonah Goldberg G-file on the subject

Read the whole thing: The French are Revolting:

Today is Bastille Day, which commemorates the capture of an almost entirely empty prison, the cold-blooded murder of six unarmed soldiers, and the execution of one French governor already captured by the mob. Of course there is symbolic importance to the sacking of the Bastille. The French (really the Parisian) poor rose up in a spirit of democratic rage, to overthrow the ancien regime and demand the ability to misgovern the country themselves.

The French Revolution was a disgusting affair of tyrannical ego, greed and power-lust, made all the worse because it took a good idea and corrupted it, like making a BMW into a low-rider.

The single most disgusting aspect of the French Revolution was its attitude toward tradition. In effect, the Revolutionaries looked at the old house of custom, monarchy, and the Church, and said "Well, I don't like the drapes and this carpeting is pretty bad. That dinette set should go over there. And you know, that chaise lounge looks like something out of Greg Brady's swank attic bachelor pad so let's just burn the whole place down, murder the staff, execute the architects and imprison anybody who ever said anything nice about the place — and their families too, just in case."

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‘Harry Potter’ Author Secretly Wrote Crime Novel Under Male Pseudonym - now #1 on Amazon

The Cuckoo's Calling is number 1 on Amazon.

At The Blaze: J.K. Rowling used the name Robert Galbraith to write “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” according to the U.K. Sunday Times.

“I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name,” Rowling said, according to The Telegraph.

“In a rare feat, the pseudonymous Galbraith combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime in his stellar debut,” Publishers Weekly raved earlier this year.

“Galbraith” came complete with a fictitious biography: a former Royal Military Police officer who took up private security. “The idea…grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world.”

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Weather forecast of the day

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How the World Was Misled About Government Skype Eavesdropping

Read the whole thing at Slate: Since it was purchased by Microsoft in 2011, Skype has been extremely evasive on the issue of government surveillance. Now, a string of leaked secret details from the National Security Agency reveal why.

The Guardian also cites documents showing that work began on integrating Skype into the NSA’s Internet surveillance program PRISM in November 2010, several months before Microsoft purchased the service from U.S. private equity firms. By February 2011, the NSA was able to monitor Skype audio calls. In addition, by July last year, the NSA reportedly boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through PRISM.

These details compound recent revelations about Skype’s cooperation with the U.S. government. Last month, the Post reported that the NSA has a “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection” that outlines how it can eavesdrop on Skype “when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of 'audio, video, chat, and file transfers' when Skype users connect by computer alone.” About two weeks later, the New York Times reported that, five years ago, before Microsoft acquired Skype, Skype initiated an internal program called “Project Chess” to explore how it could make Skype calls readily available to the government.

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Guardian removes column: “Open season on black boys after a verdict like this”

Via Legal Insurrection, The Guardian posted, then took down, a column by Gary Younge:

Open season on black boys after a verdict like this

Posted: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 07:25:00 GMTPosted:2013-07-14T08:07:42Z

Calls for calm after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin are empty words for black families.

Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13 July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you didn’t like the look of him.

The killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year was tragic. But in the age of Obama the acquittal of George Zimmerman offers at least that clarity. For the salient facts in this case were not in dispute. On 26 February 2012 Martin was on his way home, minding his own business armed only with a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. Zimmerman pursued him, armed with a 9mm handgun, believing him to be a criminal. Martin resisted. They fought. Zimmerman shot him dead.

Who screamed. Who was stronger. Who called whom what and when and why are all details to warm the heart of a cable news producer with 24 hours to fill. Strip them all away and the truth remains that Martin’s heart would still be beating if Zimmerman had not chased him down and shot him.

There is no doubt about who the aggressor was here. The only reason the two interacted at all, physically or otherwise, is that Zimmerman believed it was his civic duty to apprehend an innocent teenager who caused suspicion by his existence alone.
Appeals for calm in the wake of such a verdict raise the question of what calm there can possibly be in a place where such a verdict is possible. Parents of black boys are not likely to feel calm. Partners of black men are not likely to feel calm. Children with black fathers are not likely to feel calm. Those who now fear violent social disorder must ask themselves whose interests are served by a violent social order in which young black men can be thus slain and discarded.

But while the acquittal was shameful it was not a shock. It took more than six weeks after Martin’s death for Zimmerman to be arrested and only then after massive pressure both nationally and locally. Those who dismissed this as a political trial (a peculiar accusation in the summer of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden) should bear in mind that it was politics that made this case controversial.

Charging Zimmerman should have been a no-brainer. He was not initially charged because Florida has a “stand your ground” law whereby deadly force is permitted if the person “reasonably believes” it is necessary to protect their own life, the life of another or to prevent a forcible felony.

Since it was Zimmerman who stalked Martin, the question remains: what ground is a young black man entitled to and on what grounds may he defend himself? What version of events is there for that night in which Martin gets away with his life? Or is it open season on black boys after dark?

Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict will be contested for years to come. But he passed judgement on Trayvon that night summarily.

“Fucking punks,” Zimmerman told the police dispatcher that night. “These assholes. They always get away.”

So true it’s painful. And so predictable it hurts.

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NOT GUILTY!!! (Zimmerman)

Legal Insurrection has details.

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Massive Public Transportation Patronage Fraud In Illinois

Read the whole thing:

When Metra CEO Alex Clifford asked about his chances for keeping his job, he received a bruising reply from the rail agency's board chairman, according to a memo that offers a snapshot of political clout as allegedly practiced in Illinois.

Clifford had displeased Metra board Chairman Brad O'Halloran by denying requests for jobs, raises or contracts for friends of House Speaker Michael Madigan and other influential politicians, the April 3 memo alleged.

According to Clifford's written account, O'Halloran believed that saying no to Madigan was serious enough to threaten funding for the commuter agency

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Everything You Want to Know about Obamacare in One Place

Walter Russell Mead (Via Meadia) links to a resource provided by the WSJ:

Readers interested in the Affordable Care Act should take note of an excellent new resource from the Wall Street Journal. The paper has collected all of its running coverage of the ACA implementation as well as a lot of extra features and put them on a single “Health Law Rollout” page:

This guide explains the law and its impact on industry, consumers and states, and includes maps showing state positions on Medicaid and the insurance exchanges, a subsidy calculator and a timeline of key dates in the rollout. You can also take an interactive tour of “Obamacare,” learning through your own eyes what’s covered and how the law affects you, your employer and the uninsured.

One of the biggest problems with covering Obamacare is the sheer difficulty of finding information underneath all the loose predictions and hypotheticals. Nobody—including the administration— seems to have a comprehensive understanding of the facts involved in the rollout. So if you’re in the market for one stop shop for learning as much as you can about the law, this WSJ page seems like a good place to start.

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Cronyism in your school lunch

The Hill: On Monday, the Department of Agriculture announced it was looking to buy the yogurt for schools participating in a federally assisted program that subsidizes school lunches.

Schumer added that the USDA announcement was "a boon for New York yogurt and dairy industries, and it's beneficial for the health of our kids."

So far this year, Chobani, a New York-based company that produces the best-selling brand of Greek yogurt in the country, paid $80,000 to Cornerstone Government Affairs to lobby Congress on its behalf, according to federal records. The company first hired the lobbying firm last July, shortly after Schumer petitioned the USDA.

via Overlawyered.

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Twinkies will return on Monday (although Walmart has them now)

Walmart is already stocking them.

Hostess Brands Inc. was struggling for years before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in early 2012. Workers blamed the troubles on years of mismanagement, as well as a failure of executives to invest in brands to keep up with changing tastes. The company said it was weighed down by higher pension and medical costs than its competitors, whose employees weren't unionized.

The trimmed-down Hostess Brands LLC has a far less costly operating structure than the predecessor company. Some of the previous workers were hired back, but they're no longer unionized.

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Man sues Apple for failing to save him from smut

"The Plaintiff became totally out of synch in his romantic relationship with his wife, which was a consequence of his use of his Apple product."

via BoingBoing.

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Another Boeing Dreamliner fire - while parked at Heathrow, closing airport.

So much for redesigned batteries?

The BBC reports that London's Heathrow Airport is closed after a fire broke out aboard a parked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner. No injuries were reported, and apparently no one was aboard the plane when the fire started while parked away from the airport's gates. "The aircraft was parked on a remote parking stand," a Heathrow spokesperson told the BBC.

The fire comes just under three months after the Federal Aviation Administration approved fixes implemented by Boeing to the lithium-ion batteries used aboard the 787 and lifted the grounding order on the aircraft.

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Congratulations, America: Cost of Government Day Finally Arrives for 2013!

Every year, the Cost of Government Center, in partnership with Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, calculates the Cost of Government Day. This is the day on which the average American has earned enough income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at the federal, state and local levels.

In 2013, Cost of Government Day (COGD) falls on Saturday, July 13. Working people must toil 194 days out of the year just to meet all the costs imposed by government. This year marks the fifth consecutive year COGD has fallen in July. Prior to the Obama Administration, the latest Cost of Government Day recorded was June 27.

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10 Movies to Watch if You Loved Sharknado

Mental Floss has a list of 10 other awesomely terrible SyFy movies, although there are far more than the 10 they chose.

Here's a highlight reel for Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus:

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Jonah Goldberg on Making Government 'Smarter': Trying to do dumb things the smart way.

“We can’t take comfort in just being cynical,” the president admonished. “We all have a stake in government success — because the government is us.”

This is among the president’s favorite formulations, and it gets to the heart of the problem. The government is not “us.” The government is — or is supposed to be — a collection of agencies that do things taxpayers and voters want done. In short, it is a tool.

Sometimes the smartest way to use a tool is not to use it at all. A garden rake is a useful tool. But it’s not useful for every task. No matter how smart the surgeon, there’s no smart way for him to use a rake to remove a kidney.

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Friday links

LEGO Real Life Construction Ideas.

1954 film: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb.  Related, The Soviets Built A Giant Gun That Could Shoot Nukes.

Excellent Sand Sculptures.

Magnificent Animal Armor.

The Most Dangerous Ways To Open Wine.

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Dog picture(s) du jour: Poodle trimmed and dyed to look like the Simpsons

minus Maggie, but still...

And here's the groomer's homage to Sesame Street:

More here, via Splitsider.

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1954 film: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb

Atomic tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds (later the Nevada Test Site) show effects on well-kept homes, homes filled with trash and combustibles, and homes painted with reflective white paint. Asserts that cleanliness is an essential part of civil defense preparedness and that it increased survivability.

via Open Culture.

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Re: Zimmerman, "The most disjointed, fact-free, histrionic, and ineffective closing argument...

...that I’ve heard delivered by a State prosecutor in a murder case in more than two decades of practicing law."

If you're not following Andrew Branca's daily synopsis/analysis of the Zimmerman trial over at Legal Insurrection, you're really missing out.

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Why are testicles kept in a vulnerable dangling sac?

Read the whole thing at Slate.  Excerpt:

Why, on the path from the primordial soup to us curious hairless apes, did evolution house the essential male reproductive organs in an exposed sac? It's like a bank deciding against a vault and keeping its money in a tent on the sidewalk.

Some of you may be thinking that there is a simple answer: temperature. This arrangement evolved to keep them cool. I thought so, too, and assumed that a quick glimpse at the scientific literature would reveal the biological reasons and I’d move on. But what I found was that the small band of scientists who have dedicated their professional time to pondering the scrotum’s existence are starkly divided over this so-called cooling hypothesis.

Reams of data show that scrotal sperm factories, including our own, work best a few degrees below core body temperature. The problem is, this doesn’t prove cooling was the reason that testicles originally descended. It’s a straight-up chicken-and-egg situation—did testicles leave the kitchen because they couldn't stand the heat, or do they work best in the cold because they had to leave the body?

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Obama Justice Department Organized and Funded Protests Against George Zimmerman

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the DOJ on April 24, 2012. According to the documents JW received, a little-known DOJ unit called the Community Relations Service deployed to Sanford, FL, to organize and manage rallies against Zimmerman.

March 25 – 27, 2012, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”

March 25 – 28, 2012, CRS spent $1,142.84 “in Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”

March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent $892.55 in Sanford, FL “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida.”

March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent an additional $751.60 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”

April 3 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $1,307.40 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”

April 11-12, 2012, CRS spent $552.35 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.” – expenses for employees to travel, eat, sleep?

“These documents detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “My guess is that most Americans would rightly object to taxpayers paying government employees to help organize racially-charged demonstrations.”

Read the whole thing at PJM.

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Grapes of wrath - scofflaw farmer's refusal to give half his crop to the national raisin reserve

Read the whole story at WaPo.  Excerpts:

The national raisin reserve might sound like a fever dream of the Pillsbury Doughboy. But it is a real thing — a 64-year-old program that gives the U.S. government a heavy-handed power to interfere with the supply and demand for dried grapes.

It works like this: In a given year, the government may decide that farmers are growing more raisins than Americans will want to eat. That would cause supply to outstrip demand. Raisin prices would drop. And raisin farmers might go out of business.

To prevent that, the government does something drastic. It takes away a percentage of every farmer’s raisins. Often, without paying for them.

These seized raisins are put into a government-controlled “reserve” and kept off U.S. markets. In theory, that lowers the available supply of raisins and thereby increases the price for farmers’ raisin crops. Or, at least, the part of their crops that the government didn’t just take.

For years, Horne handed over his raisins to the reserve. Then, in 2002, he refused.

Horne’s case reached the Supreme Court this spring... last month, the high court issued its ruling and gave Horne a partial victory. A lower court had rejected Horne’s challenge of the law. Now, the justices told that court to reconsider it.

The reserve is run by the Raisin Administrative Committee, a Fresno-based organization made up of industry representatives, but overseen by the Agriculture Department. The committee is allowed to sell off some of those reserve raisins that it took for free. It can use those proceeds to pay its own expenses and to promote raisins overseas.

And if there’s any money left over, it goes back to the farmers whose raisins were taken.

The committee is not very good at having money left over.

“We generated $65,483,211. And we pretty well spent it all,” said Gary Schulz, the committee’s president and general manager, reviewing the books for one recent year. That year, the committee spent those millions on storage fees. Overseas promotions. Administrative overhead.

So what, precisely, was left for the farmers?

“Zero,” said Schulz.

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Creepy vintage beauty treatments that look Spanish Inquisition-esque

See the whole slide show here, via BoingBoing.

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Zombified, An Interactive Behind the Scenes Look at How Zombies Are Created on ‘The Walking Dead’

The creative team at CableTV.com has produced “Zombified,” an interactive behind the scenes look at how zombies (walkers) are made on AMC’s The Walking Dead. The animated tour covers everything from casting and costume design to a secret recipe used for zombie blood. You can take the undead tour at CableTV.com.

More at Laughing Squid.

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Heh: Hooligan gang fight narrated by David Attenborough

via Have You Seen This?

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Video: The Most Dangerous Ways To Open Wine

Nice Outfit.



via Dave Barry.

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Wednesday links

The physics of waterslides.

Is it easier to fart while standing up or lying down?

The History of Circumcision.

Game of Throne Characters Drawn in the Style of The Simpsons.  Related, The Iron Throne as George R.R. Martin really imagined it would look is terrifying.

Are Wolves Really Howling at the Moon?

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The Iron Throne as George R.R. Martin really imagined it would look is terrifying

Martin: 

The HBO throne (see below) has become iconic. And well it might. It’s a terrific design, and it has served the show very well…Everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves. And yet…it’s still not right. It’s not the Iron Throne I see when I’m working on The Winds of Winter. It’s not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books.. HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court…my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and asymmetric…

The HBO throne is none of those things. It’s big, yes, but not nearly as big as the one described in the novels. And for good reason. We have a huge throne room set in Belfast, but not nearly huge enough to hold the Iron Throne as I painted it. For that we’d need something much bigger, more like the interior of St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, and no set has that much room. The Book Version of the Iron Throne would not even fit through the doors of the Paint Hall.

The HBO version: 

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